Saturday, January 28, 2017

Catholic School Memories

As Catholic communities throughout the United States observe this year's Catholic Schools Week, it is a commonplace to acknowledge that that fewer Catholic children attend a Catholic school today than was the case 50-60 years ago, in what we might recall as a kind of "golden age" of Catholic education in America. But for those who do the benefits are still evident. Attending a Catholic school cannot guarantee that one will continue to identify as a Catholic and actively practice the faith as an adult, but it does seem to make a significant difference. And, for those coming from poorer backgrounds, Catholic schooling can also make a marked difference in their future socioeconomic
status. In short, Catholic schools continue to rank among the American Catholic Church's most admirable successes.

All of which makes me think back to my own experience as a Catholic school pupil in a very different time. In 1950s New York where I grew up, parish and
neighborhood were largely one and the same and were in many ways largely
self-contained communities. Of course, people went out of their neighborhoods
to work elsewhere in the city, and the wider world's influence was certainly
felt within those communities. But, for most of us kids, most of our day-to-day
needs, both social and spiritual, seemed to be met there in the parish. Such
neighborhoods were overwhelmingly hard-working blue-collar, working class
communities – at a time when strong unions and the general post-war prosperity
instilled the forward-looking optimism that goes with a sense of collective
upward mobility.

The parish school itself (see photo above) was an old, early 20th-century
building, barely able to accommodate the 1400 or so students enrolled in it in
my time. In winter, the heat sometimes didn’t work, and we would sit in class
with our coats on. Such privations would be unacceptable today, but then they
seemed perfectly normal, completely coherent with how we lived – in apartment
buildings where likewise the heat often didn’t quite work in winter!

As for the Sisters who taught us, religious
life - apart from celibacy and not having children of one’s own –did not seem harder than the lives most working people lived at
that time, and in some respects it may even have seemed more secure. But
surely teaching anywhere from 50 to 60 kids five days each week had to be a
real challenge. Some of my teachers, my 8th grade teacher, for
example, were quite experienced. Others were inevitably less so. For example, for my 5th grade teacher, we were her first class. The amazing thing about the
parochial school system in those days was that putting a girl in a habit and
sending her into a crowded classroom barely out of novitiate and telling her to
control and teach a class of more than 50 kids somehow managed to work – and
really worked quite well. As I remarked at the time of my 50th High
School reunion in 2015, we became judges and lawyers, policemen and priests,
teachers and truck-drivers. So, in that
sense certainly, school did its job and did it very well. Again, what made
it all work so well was that it was coherent with the rest of our world. Adults at that time fully supported the school and the Catholic sub-culture it represented, and they valued the Sisters and so almost always sided with
them.

It was a world of clearly defined moral rules and social
expectations, starting with gender roles and family life and moving onward and
outward from there. Not everyone benefited equally from those rules and
expectations. For some, in the end the burdens may have outweighed
the benefits. But, for the majority, the burdens seemed bearable and paid off as
guideposts toward a reasonably predictable and stable way of life. In the half-century and more that followed,
enormous economic and cultural changes would eviscerate the opportunities
available for working class people with modest educational background and
radically diminish their prospects for financial and social stability in
successfully functioning families – something recent events, in particular the
2016 election, have made our society so much more conscious of. Social change
always has winners and losers, and we should never pretend otherwise.

Parochial schools in those days were fairly basic. We had no
kindergarten, just 8 grades. So in the fall of 1953, my mother took me to the
local public school for 1st grade. Then, the following
year, I started 1st grade again at parish school. (Why I could
start 1st grade in public school but not in the parish school I
can’t say, but I suspect it may have had something to do with the overcrowding
in the Catholic school. This was the post-war “baby boom,” after all!)

Unlike the public school, which involved a fairly long walk back and forth, the parish
school was just across the street. I had laywomen as teachers in grades 1, 3,
and 4, and Dominican Sisters in all the other grades. The school was so crowded
that classes were half-day sessions through grade 5. By that time, a new
parish high school had been built, and the old high school building became part
of the elementary school, virtually doubling the amount of space available. Midway through 3rd grade, I was “skipped” to the middle of the 4th grade. Having
students “skip” a grade was also, I suspect, one more way of dealing with the
widespread overcrowding!

I most certainly did not want to “skip.” I craved stability, and
being wrenched out of my class and dropped down into the middle of a grade, the first half of which I had already missed was certainly
traumatic. In particular, what I had missed that first term had been long division – something I struggled with for quite some time. I
cried a lot that spring, struggling with my long-division homework. But, long-division aside, I liked school. Each
September, when school resumed and we got our new textbooks, I rushed to read
through the entire history book as quickly as possible, so eager was I to
learn, so in love was I with other times and other places.It was, of course, the height of the Cold War. We were all caught
up in the fear of communism and of nuclear war, a danger brought home to us by
the semi-annual civil defense drills, when – at the sound of the air-raid siren
- we would all crawl under our desks at school (or run and hide in a nearby
building if it was summer and we were playing in the park).

Needless to say, in a 1950s parochial school, it was not
politics but religion that permeated every day of the school year and every
subject of study. We prayed at the beginning and the end of the day (and before
and after lunch). We recited the Morning Offering in the morning, various other
prayers throughout the course of the day, and an Act of Contrition at day’s
end. (Was that because we had sinned so much at school?) Whenever one of the priests came into the classroom to speak to us or to our teacher, before he
departed we would reverently request his priestly blessing. Then we
would all (including Sister) dutifully drop to our knees while Father raised
his hands in a semicircle and then made the sign of the cross over us, saying Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater, et
Filius, et Spiritu Sanctus. Meanwhile, from celebrating Our Lady’s birthday
on September 8, to the daily Rosary in October, decorating the crib at
Christmas, and making the Stations of the Cross in Lent, all the way to Mary’s
annual May Crowning at the end of that month, the calendar followed a set cycle
of taken-for-granted devotions that punctuated the year and marked the
recurring rhythm of months and seasons.

And, of course, there were the special life-cycle celebrations for which the school faithfully prepared us.
On Saturday, June 4, 1955, at an 8:00 a.m.
Solemn High Mass, I made my
First Communion. But what I
actually remember most about my First Communion was all the hours we spent
practicing beforehand. The Sisters were not about to leave anything to chance!.
As for the actual act of Communion itself - kneeling on the altar step to
receive the sacred Host on my tongue, as the priest prayed, Corpus Domini nostri, Jesu Christi custodiat
anuman tuam in vitam aetaernam, Amen – that memory is much less vivid.
Perhaps that is because it merges in memory with so many other subsequent trips
to the altar rail. For many of us in my generation (brought up post-Pius
X), that would be at least once a week. That was a lot of
Communions!

As was the norm at that time, I had made my First Confession the day
before my First Communion. After that,
confession also became another regular routine. On the Thursday before the
First Friday of every month, the whole school marched over to church for
confession. What a trial we must have been for the poor priests who had to
listen to our trivial offenses for hours on end! I have often wondered if that
experience may help account for why so many in my generation retained so
little appreciation for this sacrament and approach it so rarely!

The other life-cycle sacrament was, of course, Confirmation, which
I received in 5th grade on Sunday, September 22, 1957. The most
memorable thing about that was the Bishop – a Dutch Augustinian, who held the exalted post of sacristan to Pope Pius XII.
(A year later, he would be the one to administer the sacrament of Extreme
Unction - better known now as “Anointing of the Sick” - to the dying pope, a
service he would repeat in 1963 for Pope Saint John XXIII.) He visited our parish to consecrate the finally finished upper church and to celebrate the parish’s Golden Jubilee Mass,
and so must also have been impressed into service for that year’s confirmation
class.

But much more important to me than confirmation in my life at that
time was becoming an altar boy. In
those days, it was considered a great privilege to serve Mass. I eagerly went
with my classmates to the rectory chapel where we practiced the complex
maneuvers of moving the missal from the epistle side of the altar to the gospel
side and then back again, carrying (and kissing) the cruets with the wine and
water, ringing the bells, walking with the priest at the altar rail carrying
the communion plate, and so much more. And, of course, there was the Confiteor and all the other Latin
responses to learn, starting with Ad Deum
qui laetificat juventutem meam!

Serving as an altar boy – at Sunday Masses, weekday Masses, Low
Masses, Sung Masses, Nuptial Masses, Funeral Masses (for which we got out of an
hour or more of school), Benediction, Stations of the Cross, Forty Hours, and
the crowning event in 8th grade, Christmas Midnight Mass – was among the more unambiguous joys of my Catholic
school boyhood.

Unless one was serving at an earlier or later Mass, all of us were required to attend the Sunday 9:00 a.m. Children's Mass, at which each class sat in its assigned pews. We went to Communion in perfect formation, and at the end genuflected together in response to Sister's "clicker," before exiting the church again in perfect formation.Once I was in high school and could go to any Mass I wanted on Sundays (in a parish with 13 Sunday Masses, I usually attended the 11:00 “High Mass.” I loved the music, but above all I loved the ritual, beginning with the Asperges, when the priest appeared in an appropriately colored cope and went up and down the main aisle sprinkling the congregation with holy water. I suppose I was already was developing into an embryonic liturgical enthusiast!

Since I went to the parish high school, that transition was less
abrupt than it might otherwise have been. School was still just a block away,
and the priests who formed much of the faculty were already familiar from the
parish where I had served their Masses as an altar boy. We were about 30 in a class, and
many classmates were new guys from other parishes.

Our principal liked to say that one should learn as much in four
years of high school as in eight years of elementary school. The principal was
also our math teacher, and he was devoted to the “new math.” as it was then
called. In fact it was so “new” then that for the first month or so of my
freshman year we had no textbook and had to used mimeographed copies of the
first few chapters of the text until the books finally arrived! We also took lots of standardized tests on various Saturdays. Such tests were the rage at
the time and especially loved by our principal who aspired to heighten the school's academic standard.

Then as now, sports were an important part of high school life and
of the social hierarchy adolescents (with adult connivance) create for
themselves. But my extra-curricular activities were safer ones like the school
newspaper, the yearbook, and the annual school musicals.

In 1929, in his encyclical Divini
Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI had warned against coeducation. My elementary school classes
were co-ed through 7th grade, but we had separate boys’ and girls’
sections in 8th grade – almost as a rehearsal for high school.
Unlike the many exclusively all boys’ or all girls’ schools, our high school was what was then called “co-institutional.” In a “co-institutional” school,
both boys and girls were enrolled and shared the same building, but in separate
“Departments.” These were in effect separate schools each with its own separate
faculty and administration, its own separate entrance and stairway, separate
lunch periods, and of course completely separate classes in our separate
sections of the building. The system had its advantages and its disadvantages, as any system does.

.

Other than attendance at school Masses and the annual Holy Week
retreat in the lower church, one of the very few official school activities in
which boys and girls participated together was the annual school musical. Each year, the school put on a variety show, directed by someone who went from school to school putting on such programs. These
were light-hearted musical reviews, with corny titles like Just for Kicks (“JFK”) in 1961 and Mad About Manhattan in 1962. Being in the “chorus” of those shows
every year was for me one of the highlights of the spring term. To be sure, I
didn’t discover any latent talent, but I had a great time and genuinely enjoyed
the whole collaborative project, both rehearsals and performances, as well as
the “cast party” on the final night, at which one of my favorite
priest-teachers would get up and sing The
Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

It was a very different time - virtually another world. But it suggests that when school and surrounding environment are coherent with one another, great things can be accomplished!

About Me

Rev. Ronald Franco, CSP, is a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle (The Paulist Fathers) and Vice-Postulator for the Canonization Cause of Paulist Founder, Isaac Hecker. He is Pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish, Knoxville, TN,